Perspective

Chesterton has no pretense of being an historian or anthropologist and thus is very careful in his approach to criticizing much of the scholarship that takes place in those fields. Thus, he generally does not attempt to present original research and only makes use of facts which are well-known and more or less uncontested. Thus, for example, when he criticizes the anthropologists, he points out simply that they are not following their own standards of scientific honesty; they are creating theories which have no evidential support and ignore evidence that supports theories contrary to their own. Far from disinterested scholarship, Chesterton sees an ideological commitment to denigrating both man and Christianity, and this ideology is his chief target in this book.

Though Chesterton's goal in this book is to defend Christianity in general, he is an unashamed Roman Catholic. This is an important fact to realize, for on...